Nissan’s New Vehicles Will Read Your Mind

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The early part of January can be a drag for just about everyone as we return to work in the frigid cold, but one bright point each year for tech enthusiasts is following the product launches from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Typically, automakers use this show as an opportunity to showcase mind blowing concept features and, this year, Nissan is taking “mind blowing” and adding “mind reading.”

According to Bloomberg, Nissan is unveiling what it calls “brain-to-vehicle” technology – or B2V – a system designed to decode the desires of a driver in order to get ahead of a driver’s desires. For example, a driver wearing the B2V skullcap could transmit brain activity that causes a car to accelerate or stop before the driver actually initiates any movement to do so – as much as a half second sooner than the driver could act.

While this may sound like an uninteresting development, since the B2V’s actions are almost imperceptible to the driver, it’s actually designed with a driverless vehicle in mind. Nissan’s researchers say they want to avoid simply building “boxes in which you are sleeping” and, rather, hope to retain some of the pleasure of driving with autonomous cars. So the brain-to-vehicle system allows the car to detect your preferences as you ride in autonomous mode and perhaps change speed or acceleration based on your comfort level.

Nissan says the technology is exclusive and we may start to see it as a standard feature on autonomous vehicles in as soon as five years.